MORNING REPORT

October 19, 1995|SHAUNA SNOW | Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

TELEVISION

'Roseanne' Reverberations: Roseanne was back on her "Roseanne" set in Studio City Wednesday but co-star John Goodman wasn't. Variety had reported that "all hell broke loose" Tuesday when the star tried to fire Eric Gilliland, the show's executive producer and head writer, and Goodman was "said to have had enough." On Wednesday ABC President Ted Harbert said: "The situation is in the process of being worked out." A spokesman for Goodman declined to comment on the Variety account but confirmed that his client was supposed to have showed up for work Wednesday and didn't. Meanwhile through spokeswoman Marleah Leslie, Roseanne said: "I'm back at work, and this is the best year of the 'Roseanne' show ever." A spokesman for Carsey-Werner, the show's executive producers, said, "Eric is with the show."

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Moore Tells All: On TV, she could turn the world on with her smile, but Mary Tyler Moore's real life was filled with tears, according to a new autobiography that describes how she helped her terminally ill brother try to commit suicide by feeding him drug-laced ice cream. The suicide attempt failed, and Moore's 47-year-old brother, John, died three months later in 1992 of kidney cancer. Moore's book, "After All," the contents of which were revealed in Wednesday's New York Daily News, also details the role of her husband, cardiologist Dr. S. Robert Levine, in the attempted suicide. The book, which also deals with Moore's battle with alcoholism and the accidental shooting death of her only son, is expected in stores early next month.

POP/ROCK

Green Day Second to Carey: Hot rock group Green Day's "Insomniac" album debuted at No. 2 on the pop chart with sales of 172,000 last week, but the punk band couldn't dislodge diva Mariah Carey, whose "Daydream," bolstered by her No. 1 single "Fantasy," held on to No. 1 for the second straight week with sales of 216,000. Janet Jackson's greatest-hits collection, "Design of a Decade 1986-96," debuted at No. 4, selling 129,000 copies. Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill," the surprise hit of the year, came in third with sales of 156,000.

VIDEO

Up in the Sky--It's the Batblimp!: Warner Home Video is preparing for the Halloween release of "Batman Forever" by sending a 128-foot "Batblimp" on a 13-day journey from San Diego's Brown Field to Gotham City, N.Y. The floating lightship, bearing the movie's logo, left San Diego on Sunday, and will travel across Arizona, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania before reaching its destination Oct. 31. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, original "Batman" comic strip creator Bob Kane, 73, will be at Tower Records on Sunset on Oct. 30, where he will hold a 9-10 p.m. cyberchat on the World Wide Web's "Batman Forever" site. He'll also stay there to sign copies from the first shipment of videos, which is expected to arrive by Batmobile at midnight.

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Elsewhere on the Shelves: Disney's "Cinderella" video has sold 7 million copies since its Oct. 4 release, unseating "Playboy: The Best of Pamela Anderson," which held the video chart's top spot for 12 weeks. . . . MCA/Universal Home Video has bumped up the video release date of "Apollo 13," starring Tom Hanks, to Nov. 21, in time for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It had previously been slated to hit stores on Nov. 28. . . . CBS Video has released "The O.J. Simpson Trial--An Insider's View With Dominick Dunne," a 90-minute CBS News production.

ART

Olympic Timekeeper: "Winged Victory," a 21-foot clock tower designed by Finnish-born artist Stefan Lindfors, will be unveiled at 6:15 p.m. today at the corners of Le Conte Avenue and Westwood Boulevard, near the entrance to UCLA. The sculpture, one of 12 art clocks commissioned in past and future Olympic host cities worldwide by watchmaker and official 1996 Olympic Games timekeeper Swatch, will remain at the Westwood site until next May, when it will join clock towers from Paris and Beijing in a permanent display in Atlanta's new Centennial Olympic Park.

QUICK TAKES

Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and her Harpo Entertainment Group have entered into a broad four-year agreement with Capital Cities/ABC to create prime-time specials and series starring Winfrey. The deal also covers video, multimedia, publishing and radio projects. Meanwhile, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" is slated to continue through the year 2000. . . . Rocker Bruce Springsteen, who is due to release a new solo acoustic album on Nov. 21, joined his proteges Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers for a hard-edged 100-minute set Tuesday night at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, the New Jersey club where the Boss got his start. . . . "Sunset Boulevard" will play the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1997 as part of a 35-city tour, beginning June 28, in Denver. The star and exact Orange County dates have yet to be set, a tour spokesman said.